Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
Shot this mosaic with my new 85mm setup. 6 panel mosaic with an 85mm Sigma Art 85mm at F.2.8. ASI 2600 MC camera. Each panel was 8x2min exposures.Â
Most of the editing was trying to remove light pollution. 95% edited in APP. Had to drop to Photoshop to do some targeted colour adjustments as APP kept maxing out the memory on my M3 MacBook Pro.
Constructive criticism's welcomed. Trying to improve my editing.
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Chris
Nice mosaic. I really like the Veils at the bottom.
My only suggestion would be something I have been meaning to try out, but haven't got around to yet.
If you integrate each panel using a Bayer Drizzle with a droplet size of 1 to 1.5 and a scale of 0.5 then I don't think you would lose any noticable detail but you would end up with a smaller image that would need a lot less memory. It would also improve the undersampling (not that that is a big problem with your image).
The downside is that you will need a lot more exposures. I have had good results with the Sigma Art lens at F2. That would mean you could reduce exposure times to 60s, possibly even 30s, and get a lot more subs without using a lot more time. This might even help make light pollution a bit easier to manage. You would need to dither of course.
JC
Thanks for the suggestions!
Also can I ask what calibration frames you use? I'm not currently using any. From my research I think I just need bad pixels and flats and dark flats?
I always use a masterdark and masterflat, but typically I make them from a set of darks, flats and darkflats and then reuse them for months at a time. I should probably also reuse my BPM, but for some unknown reason I don't bother.
Calibration frames are easy to make and always improve your image.
JC
@cbphoto, very nice mosaic, I am also a big fan of mosaics, though very time consuming to produce them, CS
